


Fantasia

by Senket



Series: Melody [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, M/M, kinkmeme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:59:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senket/pseuds/Senket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade lingers in the concert hall after a concert, feeling melancholy, but it seems that he isn't the only one to loiter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fantasia

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Orchestration AU, in which Lestrade is the conductor of London Philharmonic.
> 
> [Scarlatti's Sonata in F Minor](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWBS89GbQSk), the piece which Lestrade plays.

Doctor Gregory Lestrade stood alone on a deserted stage, leaning against a bassist’s stool as he surveyed the rows and rows of empty seats before him. There was always something astoundingly devastating about a hall immediately following a concert, when all of his musicians (his family, his friends, those people he saw day in day out, those people who formed the music in his head and left him torn to pieces and rebuilt, over and over) had slunk away to their own little celebrations, when the crowds had slipped out into the night and it was just him. The buzz between his ears and the anxious wash of leftover adrenaline made him feel nervous and ill, his throat too tight.

He found something so terribly saddening about the moment after the end. With a sigh, the conductor finished the glass of champagne that had been growing warm between his fingers, carried it with him to the piano and set it beside the instrument’s long, dark legs.

No conductor was a mere conductor, after all, and though he’d never taken particularly well to composition, ever musician worth his salt or otherwise was required to study an instrument intensively and the trust was Doctor Lestrade had been a reasonably talented pianist, once upon a time. Even if his mother had always said he’d never be much more than an accompanist. Ah well- there was something just as astounding in being a conductor, in his opinion. Maybe he wasn’t coaxing hammers into motion anymore, but he was still a musician. It was bigger, really, somehow. His instrument wasn’t a piano but an _orchestra._ Throat tightening, he sat himself at the bench, running his fingers lightly over the ivories. No, he was just being a fool, slightly drunk from the three glasses of champagne and over-emotional from the concert itself. Ridiculous. He was a completely ridiculous man, sometimes. He sighed again, a sad sort of exhale.

Lestrade smoothed some imaginary dust from the higher keys, his fingers brushing tenderly over the C6.  It belonged to Dimmock now, this piano, but the hall was empty and what did it matter. Leaning his head forward briefly, he took a moment to only breathe before starting in on a piece. Scarlatti, Sonata in f minor. Soft, quiet, calm. At least at first. His eyes were half-open as he began but eased closed as he continued. The tension between his brows belayed the calmness of the motion. Though the pieces was high and reasonably movemented, though his first movements were rusty and he gave a few false starts, he found inexorably that it pulled at him as always. Ridiculous man, he reminded himself, swallowing down the lump in his throat. His left shoulder tense as he played, eyes clenched closed, his teeth gritting together.

It felt hollower than it ever had, played alone in the gigantic hall, like coaxing a dormant creature out of himself only to watch it bleed, the soft music telling, filled with the melancholy ache that crumbled out of him.

He faltered towards the end, his face screwed up from the pain of it. He breathed in the edged silence, his teeth gritted together, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes. Bad choice, that had been, but he felt no urge to play anything peppy. The trouble, of course, with music, was that it was both an expression and a catalyst. A drug that dragged you deeper into your melancholia until it was hard to breathe, to think, to live.

He started suddenly at a light touch against the back of his neck, knocking over the glass he’d deposited early. Thankfully it didn’t shatter but only rolled away, skittering against wood. Mycroft Holmes bent down to recover it, setting it on the conductor’s podium with little fuss.

“Do go on, Doctor,” Mycroft coaxed with a touch of gentleness that surprised him thoroughly, a long-fingered hand brushing down his tuxedo’s lapel before snapping out his white pocket square, crouching down to mop up little drops of what little champagne had clung to the glass beforehand. “You know what an unfinished melody will do to a man.”

“It’s too late for that,” he answered softly, tracing the edge of a key with the pad of his thumb, eyes troubled as he took in the lines of it, Mycroft Holmes all in black and white, leaning against the dark gloss of their concert Bosendorfer.

Mycroft leaned his head to the side, watching. They weren’t very far apart, really, not more than six years, but sometimes the elder Holmes made Lestrade feel so old, old and empty. Or maybe that wasn’t Holmes, maybe that was just him, just how he felt, like his only gift anymore was helping others find their own music as his own just steadily bled away, as he gave it to whoever would listen, little bits at a time. Old and empty and foolish.

It was just the champagne, he reminded himself, just the exhaustion of a concert come and gone. All he needed was a good sleep and a day with his niece and it would sort itself out. Shaking his head lightly, Lestrade turned himself to face the keys again, caressing the line of them.

Mycroft shifted with a silence that was unnerving and Lestrade tensed as he found himself suddenly boxed in, the press of Mycroft’s chest against his back as the man leaned over him, forearms locking Lestrade’s shoulders into place as Mycroft played around him, finished the piece. It didn’t match, stylistically, nor did it help that Mycroft couldn’t use the pedal Greg had perhaps relied on too heavily, but the finish of it still left Lestrade with a sudden shiver, gooseflesh rising across his arms.

His fingers knotted in his lap; he considered something to say but nothing felt appropriate. Greg nearly jumped at a hot breath ruffling his hair, his mouth falling open at the odd sensation created as Mycroft lightly brushed his nose into the conductor’s hair. Mycroft’s fingers slid slowly from the keys, open mouth pressed just above Lestrade’s ear, eyes closed as he concentrated on the heat of the older man before him.

Lestrade exhaled sharply as the man’s bony fingers came in contact with his skin, thumbs rubbing circles into the tender underside of his wrists. “Mycr-” But he cut himself off, surprised by the dry whisper of his own voice; and, anyway, Mycroft was moving. The man seated himself onto Lestrade beside the bench; they were pressed together knee to shoulder, Mycroft inspecting the keys. “Handel?”

“Hardly.”

“Ravel then.”

“You’re going to play Ravel?”

Mycroft turned to look at Lestrade, expression inscrutable. “Rhapsodie Espanole.”

Greg sucked in a breath, turning his head away suddenly. A four-hands piece, them? “I don’t know that one.”

“I’ve heard you play it, Gregory,” came Mycroft’s unconcerned reply.

The conductor’s head wiped around, expression strained with a confused sort of despair.  “I haven’t played that piece in public in nearly a decade.”

“Nevertheless.” Mycroft’s expression was soft, intent, as he turned to look at Lestrade properly. Mycroft touched him again, his fingers gentle as they brushed along the line of Lestrade’s cheek, ruffling his short hair with a sweep of thumb. Mycroft touched him the way Greg touched the piano- reverently, wistfully. Startled and a touch fearful as Lestrade’s expression had become, Mycroft somewhat smiled, his long fingers trailing down the nape of the man’s neck and along his broad shoulders. “Ravel?”

“I-”

“Or if you’d prefer not to, of course,” he answered in a rich, low voice, his dark eyes following the movement of his own fingers as they followed the lines of Lestrade’s tuxedo jacket.

“I think I’d rather not,” Greg answered in a breath. It caught on the edges and he winced at the quality of it. Too obvious, too heavy, too wanting. Swallowing, he made to turn away, to stand again, but Mycroft stopped him with a gentle but firm hand against his shoulder.

“Mister Holmes, please-” he tried, his hand a fist against his knee, pleading and tight. “I should really-“

But he was stopped again, the man’s touch insistent against his neck, pulling him closer to the Philharmonic’s Chairman of the Board. Mycroft’s mouth was soft again his, unhurried, the kiss light and un-infringing. Frozen, Lestrade stared at the too-close face. This must be a dream, he concluded, the feverish untenable flits of fancy of his mind just before a big day. What else could it be?

Mycroft had the lightest of smiles when he pulled back, just far enough to meet Lestrade’s eye. He cupped the elder’s jaw, stroking the conductor’s cheek; his thumb shifted, smoothing slowly across Greg’s bottom lip. “Another time then?”

“Mister Holmes-“

“Really.”

“Mycroft.”

Mycroft leaned in again, taking the opportunity to press his free palm against Lestrade’s hip, shifting the man to settle them together more comfortably. “Better.”

“We shouldn’t-“

“But we should,” Mycroft interrupted, his lips ghosting over the man’s chin, dipping to press against the tanned column of his throat. Lestrade shivered, each touch a tease of feather light movement that threatened to drive him over the edge of sanity. At this rate he’d shake apart before his first decent kiss. His eyes slid shut, hands seeking Mycroft’s shoulders for purchase, stability.

“Why Ravel?”

“I’ve never seen such a thing as you with your Ravel.” Mycroft’s hand slid away from his jaw and pressed over the spot between his shoulderblades instead, cradling Lestrade closer against him.

“I was hardly more than an accompanist.”

“You do yourself a disservice, Gregory,” intoned the businessman, pressing a kiss to the hollow of Lestrade’s throat, “a man might have fallen in love with your Ravel.”

“A man might have said something,” Lestrade answered in a hollow effort to be annoyed. He had, after all, only accepted the job as assistant conductor because of some defiant crush he couldn’t rid himself of- only to give up, engage in a torrential affair with the man in question’s younger brother, an affair which fell through only to leave him again with the slow burn of what had clearly become an absolutely unshakeable affection.

“A man might have done, just now.”

Lestrade sighed, a long and drawn-out breath of delight, and sank into the warmth of Mycroft’s voice.


End file.
